State inmate admits to federal tax-fraud conspiracy

Thursday

Jan 31, 2013 at 12:01 AMJan 31, 2013 at 11:16 AM

A 42-year-old woman pleaded guilty to tax-fraud conspiracy in federal court yesterday before being returned to state prison, where she is serving time for forgery and tampering-with-evidence convictions from three counties.

Kathy Lynn Gray, The Columbus Dispatch

A 42-year-old woman pleaded guilty to tax-fraud conspiracy in federal court yesterday before being returned to state prison, where she is serving time for forgery and tampering-with-evidence convictions from three counties.

Anita M. Martin admitted that she had raked in $221,502 in bogus tax refunds in 2003 and 2004 by filing false tax returns and forging W-2 forms for 62 unemployed people who bought into the scheme.

She pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge and to one count of filing a false tax return as part of a plea agreement that requires her to pay restitution of $221,502. She could be sentenced to five years in prison and fined $250,000.A sentencing date has not been set.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel A. Brown said before the hearing that Martin was operating the scheme at a Jackson Hewitt Tax Service office in Columbus and enlisted Fred J. Johnson, 41, to find people willing to lend their names to bogus tax returns.

Martin, Johnson and the filers split the refunds, which ranged from $1,443 to $6,122.

Johnson pleaded guilty in 2009 to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. He was sentenced in 2010 to a year in prison and ordered to repay $57,295 jointly with Martin. Other counts against him were dropped.

Brown said the people who lent their names to the tax forms have not been charged but have been ordered by the Internal Revenue Service to repay whatever money they received.

State-court records show that Martin has been repeatedly charged and pleaded guilty to theft and forgery during the last 10 years in Ohio, including in Franklin County. IRS investigators found her in prison in 2011 after she had fled years before while negotiating with U.S. attorneys over the federal tax-fraud charges.